A tale of two waste management systems from a Himalayan town

An uncooperative Nagar Palika in Almora has ensured that good work done by the community in managing waste comes to naught, even as it works well seven kilometers away

When Asha D’Souza relocated first from Geneva to Orcha and then to Kasar Devi, near Almora in the Kumaon hills, she was thrilled by the sheer beauty, the pure air and the pristine surroundings. Her house faces the magnificent Nanda Devi range. It is at a spot where there is no obstruction of her view, everything one needs to live comfortably is within walking distance and there are interesting people all around to meet.

The only thing that rankled and appalled her was the growing and unchecked menace of garbage she saw all around her. Almora – the closest big town – was filthy. The Nagar Palika dustbins, which run along the main road, were surrounded by plastic, rotting fruit peels, broken glass and all manner of filth and dogs, pigs and cows ran amuck. People had to make their way through town ducking the mess and covering their noses to escape the stench.

The drive up from Almora to her house was no different. Piles and heaps of garbage were making the entire area smelly and quite uninhabitable. The so-called “trenching ground”, which is actually just a dumpsite — a holy, stinking mess — is another eyesore for the residents and visitors.

For D’Souza, who spent 30 years in Switzerland, dealing with her own waste is a way of life. Even here, she deals with her kitchen waste using the Japanese Bokashi method to compost. What she saw around her was simply unacceptable. 

She first approached the municipality who said the residents would “never agree to segregate at source”. She took up the challenge in 2013 and said she and her fellow team members will run an experiment where they convince the residents to segregate, compost their wet waste, and dispose the reusable dry waste through ragpickers or the kabadiwala. They left the rest for the municipality to tackle as it thought best. Awareness was created among 100-odd families and segregation was happening soon.

By 2014, many like-minded people joined her and they formed Green Hills, which worked with the youth of Almora on ecological waste management. D’Souza, who had a long career with several international bodies primarily in Europe, managed to organise funding for her experiment from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. 

Once again, from July 2017, Green Hills demonstrated the feasibility of door-to-door collection and recycling of segregated waste in two places: One in the cantonment area where many Army families and a few civilians lived and the second in the main town of Almora. The trust hired a supervisor and seven workers to help residents segregate and to pick up the segregated waste. Once a week, recyclables were collected door to door and transported by motorcycle to store rooms provided by the nagar palika. Starting with three wards, the effort soon spread to all the 11 wards. Three villages around Almora were also covered.

It was decided that the segregated plastic was to be used for road construction. As the team walked around each ward, they used loud speakers to urge people to hand over their plastic waste. Almost 50 per cent of the population of Almora and surrounding areas were handing over their plastic waste. A portion of this was used for road construction. A total of 5 kilometers of road was built using this plastic. Under the project, they also introduced cloth bags to replace plastic bags.

The segregation experiment was simultaneously started seven kilometers away in the Army cantonment area. The CEO of the cantonment approached Green Hills and asked them to help with managing their waste. Green Hills designed the whole project for them and in two months, the civilian residents (180 families) and the Army families (another 200-250 families) fell in line. Compost pits were dug, a storage area demarcated for the recyclables and the plastic waste was being separated. The rest of the unsanitary waste is incinerated. Around 30 safai karamcharis have been hired in the cantonment to do the job. 

Green Hills received support for a year from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and got a no-cost extension for another three-and-a-half months till end-November. That was when the new Nagar Palika would be elected. The residents hoped that once the Nagar Palika saw  what could be done if someone put their mind to it, they would start doing it.

But, soon after it came into being, the re-elected chairman refused to continue with the experiment started by Green Hills. Despite having 185 safai karamcharis, the Nagar Palika argued that it could not manage what Green Hills was doing with 8 people. They also claimed they didn’t have the funds without explaining why or where the funds allocated for the body go.

D’Souza says she, her team and the many residents of the area have reached a “frustration point”. They had hoped that the Nagar Palika would continue the work, instead people have gone back to mixing their waste. “It is heartbreaking to see the trenching ground become a stinking, flaming mess that only vultures dare to approach”, she said. 

What’s even more galling is that not far away, the same experiment is working just fine in the cantonment area. The Army funds the clean up and the collection and all residents comply. Pankaj Wadhwa, a resident of Baazgaon near Almora, who has driven over 300,000 kilometers in the region and witnessed the clean up experiment by Green Hills, argues that the project had made a “visible dent in the garbage in and around Almora”. He says now the contrast between the town and the cantonment is quite startling to see : the town so quickly reverted to its old ways due to a uncooperative Nagar Palika while the army controlled area is managing just fine. In his view, the apathy of the residents is an even greater hurdle to overcome than getting the Nagar Palika to do its job.

D’Souza and her dedicated team of members — all of whom work on a voluntary basis — are not ready to give up. They have started working recently with the government on a new “Swajal” project, hoping that in the long term, the officialdom will realise its own shortcomings and that someone somewhere will try and remedy the situation. If you can’t beat them, join them seems to be the motto they are adopting. It remains to be seen how long their resolve lasts.